Depicting Encouraging Females | Lyme Disease | An Artist’s Story

Artist Anastiscia Chantler Lang @ Spoken Color Art is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of these images and article. From her series ‘Human Element. My subjects are all female with a strong message of encouragement that came out of me while fighting Lyme disease. To see Anastiscia’s body of work click on any photograph.

WHY CARE?

As stated by the Center for Disease Control

This is a tragedy that affects close to 400,000 in the USA alone yearly, and growing. LYME DISEASE the fastest spreading vector-borne, (insect biting) disease in the USA and Canada, the number of new cases of Lyme is 1.5 times greater than breast cancer and 7 times greater than HIV/AIDS. 200 children get Lyme disease every day, that’s 4 school buses of children a day diagnosed with Lyme.

The cost to treat Lyme disease is in excess of $1 billion per year, or approximately $3,000 per patient per year. But, the per-patient cost of treating PTLDS (Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome), now becoming quite common for this disease, can be in the $30,000 – $500,000 range.Most insurance plans only cover treatment for the first month, leaving the patient with out of pocket expenses for medication, supplements, treatment and in some cases care giving.

Since they were first published in 2000, the guidelines for Lyme disease have been the subject of intense controversy, including an antitrust investigation by the state of Connecticut in 2008 and hundreds of protests. The guidelines, which are followed by the CDC, restrict antibiotic treatment to two to four weeks and dismiss the existence of chronic Lyme disease, despite 700 of international, journal & scientific studies documenting cases of persistent and debilitating infection after short-term antibiotic treatment. In contrast, the ILADS (International Lyme Disease Associated Society ) guidelines recognize chronic Lyme and recommend that the “duration of therapy be guided by clinical response rather than by an arbitrary treatment course.” OUR CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE and if LYME DISEASE is allowed to continue through the USA, not to mention other countries and if means for effective diagnosis and treatment continue to be ignored by governing bodies, everyone is a debilitating bite away, not caught early enough, as numerous cases are. LYME does not discriminate who will be targeted.

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IN 2008, THE WORLD AS ANASTISCIA KNEW IT CAME CRASHING DOWN AS SHE CONTRACTED LYME DISEASE, A SERIOUS, DEBILITATING AND PAINFUL DISEASE, THAT IF LEFT UNTREATED BECOMES LIFE THREATENING. SHE HAS BEEN ON A ROLLER COASTER RIDE OF JOURNEY THROUGH LOSS, PAIN, DISAPPOINTMENT AND DISCOURAGEMENT. IT IS THROUGH ON GOING TREATMENT AND ENCOURAGEMENT HER ART HAS MADE A COMEBACK BOLDER AND MORE EXPRESSIVE THAN EVER.